


Through a Glass, Darkly

by Beguile



Series: Through a Glass, Darkly [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Kick-Ass (2010)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Crossover, Fatherless Child Soldiers Unite, First Meetings, Gen, One-Shot, Post-Kick-Ass, Post-S1 DD, Violence, aka Hit-Girl, an adult fights a pre-teen, mentions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:33:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9327026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: In the end, Daredevil meets Hit-Girl outside of Josie’s when he smells her suitcase of weapons through a haze of One Direction perfume.  One-shot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers for _Kick-Ass_ (film). References an event from the _Hit-Girl_ comic books.  
>  Contains scenes of violence between an adult and a pre-teen. 
> 
> Timeline: Post- _s1_ of Daredevil; post- _Kick-Ass_. Completely disregards subsequent seasons or films. 
> 
> I took a break from my working on my WIP to pen this one-shot. I have wanted to write a crossover between Hit-Girl and Daredevil for a while, especially after watching the Punisher eps for the umpteenth time. So I will be the first to admit that this is intended more to entertain than be a deep character study. 
> 
> Having said that, I took liberties with Hit-Girl here, drawing my influence much more from the movie where she is less a sociopath and more the by-product of indoctrination. Certainly from Matt’s perspective. I think this reading could be complicated if I write more fics between them (and I admit that is a definite possibility. She hasn’t met Frank, and I think they would get along too well not to write that story). 
> 
> The title comes from 1 Corinthians 13:12 (the King James Version) which reads, “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” Make of that what you will. 
> 
> In this fic, there is a fight between a grown man and a pre-teen girl. I tried to include as much objection on Matt’s part as I could. I personally do not advocate for violence of any kind and have no intention of glorifying it. That being said, both Daredevil and Hit-Girl are characters who commit acts of violence in violent universes. If you find this objectionable, I suggest you stop reading now. 
> 
> Readers, you’re wonderful. I hope you’re having a fantastic weekend! Please, enjoy!

 

* * *

 

Through a Glass, Darkly

 

* * *

 

            News of a jetpack-wearing vigilante rocket-launching a crimelord off his skyscraper spreads fast.  A few grainy videos turn up online showing a green speck against the blue sky suddenly lost in a ball of fire and smoke, one that carries Frank D’Amico into oblivion.  Reports vary wildly in the aftermath.  The surviving D’Amicos won’t talk to cops, so the NYPD is left to piece together the carnage in the family’s penthouse.  No way the mess was committed by the army of two currently topping everyone’s list of prime suspects. 

            Statements from witnesses don’t help clarify matters.  Some say that the green-clad vigilante Kick-Ass left alone on his jetpack, others say he was carrying a purple treasure chest full of mob money, and a scant few claim that he was accompanied by the pint-sized rage-killer Hit-Girl, seen online saving him from torture days before.  Naturally, neither Kick-Ass nor Hit-Girl can be reached for comment. 

            So the NYPD is left with a penthouse-turned-butcher-shop, some low-def cell phone footage on YouTube, and the words of a city gone Superhero-obsessed that they didn’t need the Avengers anymore.  If aliens come pouring out of the sky again, the good people of New York are going to call a guy who gets his ass kicked on the regular and the pre-teen psychopath who slaughtered her way into Internet superstardom.  Because they’ll be a big help when an invading extraterrestrial army rips heaven a new asshole and rains down destruction to level Manhattan. 

            The hype, mercifully, dies down, and the twosome are never seen again.  Copycats learn fast that it takes a lot to make it as a vigilante, and within a few short months, the only signs that Kick-Ass ever existed is piled in bargain bins at comic book stores.  Hit-Girl’s legend goes quiet, but it never truly disappears.  Her name comes up sometimes on social media when kids find phantoms in the shadows of their Instagram posts.  The footage of her saving Kick-Ass and the other vigilante, the guy who looks like Bat-Man, remains one of the highest viewed videos on YouTube.  And every now and then, from Midtown to the Upper East Side, the boys in blue get dispatched to investigate gunfire and find themselves standing knee-deep in human carnage.  Instead of saying her name, they try to laugh it off: “It can’t be.” 

            The uncertainty hangs heavier in the air than the smell of butchered meat she left behind. 

* * *

            Matt investigates what he can.  Venturing after her seems impossible.  She comes and goes without a trace, mapping an impromptu trail through the city and leaving no witnesses alive.   The only way he’ll find her is if they both end up in the same place at the same time.  “Gee,” Foggy notes on their walk to work one morning, “Who does that remind you of?”  Matt hopes that is the only comparison Foggy can draw, or at least the only comparison Foggy chooses to draw. 

            Passersby talk; clients reference.  Karen has a brief fascination with the pint-sized assassin, prompting a conversation in which Foggy describes her as a purple-haired version of Natalie Portman’s character from _Leon_ mixed with the Avenger’s former resident assassin, Black Widow, and the agility of Yoda circa _Episode II_.  Matt doesn’t have visual reference for any of those things, but he gets the idea.  The concept of a child warrior isn’t lost on him.  He half-wonders if Stick isn’t responsible for this one, knowing full well Stick wouldn’t have let one of his tag along with a guy in a wetsuit who calls himself Kick-Ass. 

            At night, the local precinct occasionally gets word about her suspected activities from other neighbourhoods, and there’s a genuine worry that Hell’s Kitchen’s vigilante problem is about to get bigger.  So for a while, every time he hears gunfire or a large blade being unsheathed, Matt can’t help expecting that bold declaration from the torture broadcast, “Show’s over, motherfuckers.”  He waits for the rush of her cape and costume, the smell of that purple wig she wears, followed by macabre explosions of things better left on people’s insides.  But she must not have business in Hell’s Kitchen, or maybe she’s leaving it all for the Devil to deal with.

* * *

             Turns out the right place, right time isn’t the middle of a gunfight or a bloodbath but the corner outside Josie’s on a drizzly Friday night. 

            “Sorry,” the girl says after rolling her suitcase on Matt’s foot, nearly taking out Karen in the process.  She continues barrelling down the sidewalk with her weighty luggage.  Between his smarting toe and the reverb caused by cracks in the pavement, Matt gets a crystal-clear image of the kind of hardware she’s packing.  Bullets and explosives leave a spicy tang in the back of his throat.  It’s a bizarre aftertaste to the waft of fruity-floral perfume she left behind.

            Karen has already stumbled into a cab, but Foggy waits by the open door.  He’s as confused as Matt for different reasons: the disjunction, for him, is from Matt’s sudden suspicion at a young girl, not the disjunction between Typical Teenage Girl and the smell of hand grenades.  “Everything alright?”

            Matt twists on the spot after her, focusing, gathering more evidence easily because she doesn’t have to work so damn hard at hiding it.  Nobody would suspect those bobbing pigtails, that swishing school girl skirt, those soft-soled ballet flats, or that sickly-sweet perfume belonged to a serial killer.  Foggy doesn’t, even with what he knows about deceiving appearances, but he can’t smell the scar tissue and scratches, can’t sense the lump on her head that burns a degree hotter than the rest of her body, or the Kevlar scraping against the insides of her jacket. 

            Matt covers by patting down his pockets, feigning forgetfulness.  “No, nothing.” He waves to them, tracking the girl’s footsteps down the sidewalk behind him.  “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”  
  
            He wanders a few paces towards his apartment entrance until the cab has pulled away before taking off after the girl.  She is standing in the entrance of an apartment building, pressing on buzzers until she gets an answer.  

            “What?” the tenant asks.

            Her voice edges into this pathetic parody of a cry.  “Mister, can you buzz me in, please?  I locked myself out.”

            The voice would be convincing enough for Matt if he didn’t have the other stimuli to go along with it.  Naturally, the door buzzes a second later.  She rips it open and hauls her precious suitcase inside.

            Matt grabs the handle from her, holding it wide open as she gets the wheels back on the tiled floor.  “Thanks,” she says warmly, making way for Matt to join her in the foyer.  She grabs the other door before he can and opens it for him. 

            “Thank you.”  He makes a show of tapping out the corners with his cane, especially around her toes.  Petty payback, but if he’s right, she’s about to kill someone, a lot of someones, and he wants to know exactly who he is dealing with.  How deep the charade of little girl goes. 

            Skin deep, apparently, and no further.  Her heartbeat finally breaks rank and goes into a spiral of impatience.  There are places she would much rather be than holding the door, but the way her breathing doesn’t break pace says that she has enough control to stick it out.  The thought that she might be one of Stick’s comes back loud and proud, and Matt doesn’t shake it till she’s standing next to him in the elevator and that perfume scrapes against his nostrils.  No way Stick would allow that shit. 

            She presses a button near the bottom of the panel, likely the topmost floor, then asks him, “What floor?” 

            “Eight, please.”  Close enough that he can scale the stairs before she gets herself set-up, but far enough away that she won’t expect him coming after her.  She certainly buys it, calming now on the last leg of her journey.  Her hand tightens on the handle of her suitcase on approach with her floor.  But there’s absolutely no suspicion for him in her stance.  He can’t sense her moving to look at him, to size him up.  He’s just another tenant, some guy on his way home from the bar. 

            Matt uses the illusion to his advantage.  “Are you locked out of your apartment, too, or just the building?”

            Her heart quickens, not having expected to substantiate her lie, but the adrenaline spike makes her sharper.  That smile does too: blushing, cherubic menace burns bright even to Matt’s senses.  “Oh, my daddy was dropping off my suitcase.  I’m sleeping over at a friend’s.”

            “Your dad didn’t bring it to the building?”

            She laughs, “Mister, I’m thirteen.”  She’s not.  Maybe small for a twelve-year-old, but not thirteen, but she’s playing a role, one she doesn’t understand in the slightest.  This girl has never been normal.  She looks down her nose at normal.  No wonder she sounds like a parody when she tries to act it.  “I wouldn’t let my dad within five blocks of me in public.”

            There’s something in the way she says it, the way she plummets from her smile to her stance to her heartrate, that makes Matt do the same.  Her lie has skirted too close to the truth and dishonoured it somehow, cut it all the way to the angry, raging core.  Matt saves her, a favour from one fatherless child-soldier to another: “Your friend didn’t buzz you back in?”  
  
            A sigh.  This lie comes too easily.  Teenage Girl is an accessible stereotype for her to mine for material.  “We’re watching _The Notebook_.  The kissing scene is probably on.”

            Matt humours her with a small laugh.  It’s a wonder more people don’t see through her, but he could say the same about himself.  The elevator dings at floor 8.  “Enjoy the movie.” 

            The cherubic smile returns, blood gushing into her cheeks like she actually is going to watch a movie with her friend.  Lying is one skill she is going to master eventually.  Her body falls in line when she really needs it to: “I will!  Thanks!”  

            Matt disembarks.  She shuts the elevator doors as soon as he’s off, sparing him from pretending to walk to an apartment.  Instead, he heads straight for the stairs and follows the elevator up, folding his cane as he goes.  He might need it later. 

            She gets off as planned on the top floor, but then she, too, steps into the stairwell.  Matt lingers on the landing below her, listening to the struggle of teen versus artillery as she climbs the last flight to the roof.  She makes quick work of the lock and rolls out with her suitcase into the night. 

            Matt listens at the door until she’s out of sight, having rounded the small enclosure to the far side of the roof.  He doesn’t have his costume, and she has already seen his face, heard his voice, but there has to be shadows where he can hide.  Places he can use to get to her before she does what she’s about to do.

            She is suiting up for something.  Her coat hid her Kevlar vest and her leather jacket.  She tugs on a pair of leather pants over her bare legs, trading her school girl shoes for combat boots.  Gloves next, then mask, and finally that synthetic wig flaps out of the suitcase and covers her pigtails. 

            Matt stops her before she can arm herself.  It doesn’t matter: she has a gun in hand the second he starts speaking.  “Little past your bedtime, isn’t it?”

            Her heartbeat spikes.  She tracks through the darkness with her weapon.  Quiet little thing, toeing her way around the small enclosure of the roof access to find him.  Matt follows the wind to where his voice will echo, giving him some cover.  “City can be a dangerous place for a little girl.”

            The recognition dawns on her in a sudden rush of blood to her head.  Her gun lowers.  She speaks in a lower register to make herself sound older, abandoning the performance of girlhood completely. “You’re the Daredevil.”

            It still gives him pause to hear the name.  Most people don’t say it; their screams or cries or grunts of pain are more his name in the mask than Daredevil.  “You’re Hit-Girl.”

            “You here for Dubrowski’s guys too?”

            The card game in the building adjacent takes on new meaning.  “I’m here for you,” Matt replies.  “You gonna put that gun down?  We both know I don’t need one.”

            She tosses it back into her suitcase.  “I don’t need one either.”

            “You sure like using them though.  Guns.  How many you bring tonight?”  Matt can’t tell, but he can make an educated guess based on the smells from her ammo bags.  “Three?  Four?  Not to mention your knives and grenades.”  
  
            Damn, she’s quiet.  Matt has to track her heartbeat from how deftly she creeps around the roof to catch sight of him.  He drifts to the other side of the enclosure, out of her sightline, but doesn’t dare make a run for the suitcase with her being as quick as she is.  “I’ll handle Dubrowski’s men,” he promises her.  “Take that wig off.  Go home.”  She shuffles back around to her suitcase.  Matt takes one last jab before slipping into shadow, gripping his cane tightly.  “Before Mom finds out you’re late for curfew.”

            “My mom’s dead.”

            His heart sinks, hating himself for doing this.  “Dad, then.”

            Hit-Girl sighs and doesn’t move from her place by the suitcase.  “Dad’s dead too.”  Her toe crawls along the edge of her portable armoury, momentarily struck by the question of what it’s doing there.  What she’s doing there.  The resolve comes back harder and stronger to compensate.  “Look, Douchedevil, I’m not looking to start a turf war.”  
  
            “Good,” Matt replies, smirking.  That kind of language fits her better than references to _The Notebook_. 

            “I’m here to end Dubrowski’s men, and then I’m gone.  Be back home in time for infomercials and softcore.”  She taps her toe on the rooftop, considering.  “Unless you want to team-up?  Get me home faster?”          

            “Not looking for a sidekick.”

            She huffs, incredulous.  “Dude, do I look like a sidekick to you?”

            “You must have been somebody’s,” her heartbeat flutters into an angry-sad hum.  “Somebody taught you how to fight.”  When she doesn’t answer immediately, Matt presses, “They dead too?”

            He thinks back to what little information is available on her.  “The man you tried to save, the one dressed like Batman.  He was your mentor, wasn’t he?”  Her finger twitches back towards her arsenal, but it doesn’t get there because she knows there’s not enough bullets to make her feel better.  There’s not enough weapons in the world to make her anything except a little girl lost and mourning.  Matt recognizes the rhythm of her pulse, the sad silence emanating from beyond his hiding place.  “He _was_ your father.”  
  
            Guns scrape together.  Her heartbeat thunders.  She rushes around the small enclosure, sliding at the last minute in case he has a weapon.  Matt dodges her once, but she’s too quick the second time, bearing down on him like an avenging angel. 

            He lifts his head, wanting her to look into his face when she kills him.  If she kills him.  Her pulse says yes, but she hasn’t pulled the trigger.  Instead, she winds down.  “Jesus, asshole,” the gun goes back to her side.  “You get off on pretending to be a superhero?”  
  
            “Had you,” Matt replies.  Still might, she keeps that gun poised at his head.  He readies his cane to throw in case she fires. 

            The gun goes down.  No sense in killing him, Matt supposes.  A blind guy can’t report her appearance, and who would believe him anyways?  She has the same plausible deniability that he does.  Hit-Girl scoffs, “Go home, dickface.  I’ve got shit to do.”   

            She about-faces, stalking back towards her suitcase.  Matt takes a step away from the wall of the enclosure, and without really thinking about what he’s doing, about who he’s challenging to fight, he chucks his folded cane at her.  

            It hits her square in the back.  Hit-Girl hits the deck with a thud.  The gun scatters out of her hand.  Matt runs, scooping it up before she can grab it, tossing it back into her suitcase with the others.  He’s about to nab the case when he takes a hit to the shoulder.  His cane, thrown back to him, snaps against the rooftop.  He spins, gripping the injury, temporarily lost in sensory overdrive. 

            “Say,” she notes merrily, “That was a pretty good shot for a blind guy.”

            He finds himself the same time Hit-Girl does, when she dives in a flying tackle to his chest that carries them both into the small ledge around the roof.  His glasses fly off his face.  Just as well, because her punches start raining down on him in rapid fire.  What she lacks in power, she more than makes up for with the sharpness of her knuckles and the velocity of her fists.  Matt can’t deflect.  He eventually gives up, instead nabbing her by the waist and rolling, throwing her hard into the ground. 

            She tries to get up; he doesn’t let her, ripping her ankles out from under her.  He grabs her in one lock, then another, and then another, unable to hold her for more than a few seconds before she scrambles away.  But something in the way he does it makes her heart rattle to new life.  This girlish excitement that overtakes the other sounds of their melee.  Hit-Girl spits a wad of blood out of her mouth and sniffles wetly, more blood shooting out her nose.  A smile breaks out across her face.  “Oh!  You really are the Daredevil!”

            And just like that, she’s back on him, the fight really having started.  All those punches were her holding back for the sake of the cheeky blind guy who threw a cane at her.  She gives it her all fighting Daredevil.  Matt recognizes several styles of martial arts, and several things that she’s invented for her size and energy. Hit-Girl wraps over his chest like a snake, mounts his back like a frightened cat, and then drops her elbow where his neck meets his shoulder to drive him into the rooftop.  He twists at the last second and brings her down instead, but he can’t bring himself to commit to the manoeuver.  The force would crack a grown man’s skull; it’s going to kill a little girl, no matter how tough she is. 

            Matt gets himself back to his feet.  Hit-Girl doesn’t.  She’s lying on the ground groaning.  Her little girl voice is back with a vengeance, and Matt can’t sense other signs of a performance.  He offers her a hand.  “Here,” he says. 

            Her heartbeat.  It turns on a dime from woeful to enraged, from child to warrior, and he hears it flare right before she grabs him by the hand and kicks his wrist.  The bones don’t break, but Matt cries out amidst the ripping and tearing sounds of the limb being sprained.  Hit-Girl shuts him up by kneeing him in the face, landing him on the ground next to her.

            Matt lies there gasping, dizzy.  He listens to her struggling to stand after the knock to the head, her heartrate dialing back to measured menace.  She is definitely headed for him though, sniffling and spitting blood the whole way.  And in the brief moments he has before being attack anew, Matt finally realizes that he is not prepared to seriously injure this girl.  No matter that she’s a serial killer, that she’s a trained warrior, that she may very well be one of Stick’s pawns, that she is totally prepared to do her worst to him: he is not going to hurt her more than he already has.

            He rolls out of the way of her roundhouse kick, cradling his injured wrist to his chest.  While Hit-Girl winds up for another assault, Matt rips off his jacket.  It’s hard to do with one working hand.  He ends up dodging several of her attacks while he moves, shaking the damn thing off just as she latches onto his chest again.  He throws his coat over her head and drops hard to the ground, aiming primarily for her back.  The blow stuns her, giving him time to wrap her up, head to waist, in the jacket, tying the sleeves around her wrists.  She’s bundled up in a straightjacket.  He kneels on her legs to keep her from kicking him. 

            When it’s down, he rolls her back over. 

            She spits at him.  Matt wipes the blood off his face as she struggles with the jacket below him. 

            The sounds of thundering footsteps catch Matt’s attention.  Hit-Girl stop struggling, listening alongside him.  The card game’s over.  Dubrowski’s men are on the run through the building. 

            “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Hit-Girl curses.  “They’re getting the fuck away.”

            “I’ll take care of them,” Matt growls at her. 

            “They’re gonna be long gone by the time you get to them.”

            “I’m not letting you kill them.”  
  
            “Ugh, you suck!”

            Matt unpins her legs and moves away before she can stop him.  Hit-Girl scrambles behind him, but he only has ears for the flurry of footsteps heading onto the street.  Dubrowski’s men are racing away from the building, separating into smaller groups with small shouts of, “The God damn devil, man!  The God damn devil!”

            Hit-Girl wanders over to him, still bound in his jacket, to watch her targets run off. “Fuck,” she ambles to her suitcase, kicking it shut.  “Shit.”

            Blood is draining out of his nose and mouth; Matt wipes it off on his sleeve.  He takes out his cell phone, dialing Brett’s number directly with a quick report about where the groups are running.  When he finishes, Matt turns his attention back to Hit-Girl.  She is still trying to break her hands free from the knotted sleeves of his jacket.  Matt sighs.  “You done?” he swipes at more blood on his face.  “You done?  I’ll let you go.”

            She doesn’t answer.  Matt closes and zips her suitcase, kicking it out of reach before grabbing her by the wrists.  She is about to keep fighting.  “Hey!” he dodges.  “I can put another call into the precinct.  They can pick you up the same time as Dubrowski’s men.  And I’ll make sure you get tried as an adult.  Get you sent to Super Max so you won’t get a chance to do this to anyone else.”

            Hit-Girl tugs out of his grasp.  She stalks a few steps away from him, deeply offended.  “I wouldn’t do this shit to cops.”  She mutters an addendum, "Not the good ones..."

            “But you’ll do it to them,” he gestures towards the men running scared into the night.

            The expression on her face must be one of utter incredulity.  He can feel her accusation through the darkness in front of his eyes.  “Duh.”  The fact that he won’t leaves her unbalanced.  Hit-Girl leans herself against the ledge of the building.  “You could have at least let me take shots at their kneecaps or something.  I don’t have to kill them,” but that little rush of heartbeats after she finishes speaking says it’s better if she does.  Matt can’t tell if its programming or psychology, if she was born that way or trained that way.  She has flickers of humanity that aren’t a performance, that aren’t a parody of real life.  Sociopaths don’t care about their dead dads. 

            “I can’t let you go and do this again,” he tells her.  “What you do is wrong.”

            She sighs dejectedly.  “You’re right.  You’re right!  What I do is wrong.  Much better to break people’s arms and hand them over to the cops.”  
  
            “I don’t kill people.”  
  
            “Dude, I’ve read about what you do in the papers.  There’s photos online of a guy who’s face you broke so bad he eats through a straw.  So don’t tell me what you do is better.”  
  
            “It’s better than this.”

            Hit-Girl scoffs, tosses her synthetic purple hair.  “Untie me,” she tells him.  “Fight’s over.  You want to call the cops?  Go ahead.  Just…you let me make one phone call first?”            

            There’s sadness edging into her voice similar to how she sounded when she asked to be buzzed into the building.  Matt stops her, “Spare me the tears, kid.”

            “I’m not crying, dumbass.  I…” the hesitating sounds rehearsed, like she’s mimicking a normal person’s speech pattern, but again, there’s no parody in it.  No mockery.  Her shame is genuine.  “I gotta call my dad.  My adoptive dad, Marcus.  Let him know what’s going to happen.  He should hear it from me.” 

            “He know you’re out tonight?  Marcus?”  
  
            My but the kid has an attitude on her.  Matt feels her eye roll from where he’s standings.  “No.  He and his girlfriend are antiquing in Vermont this weekend.  I’m supposed to be at home with the babysitter.”  
  
            Matt is regretting not having already called the police.  “What did you do to the babysitter?”

            “Nothing!” she lies, her heartrate a panicked rush towards an explanation, an indignant series of fuck you-s for his having asked.  “I slipped her something.  She’s going to wake up tomorrow, and I’m going to make her pancakes to help with her headache.”

            He should call the police.  He believes her when she says she isn’t going to kill them, and that would bring an end to the work of a mass murdering vigilante.  A mass murdering vigilante who had to watch her father burn to death, who probably still has to watch herself fail to save him over and over because the video is still making the rounds on YouTube. 

            Who doesn’t know another life besides murder. 

            Who will get sent to Super Max and _really_ never know another life besides murder.

            Matt wipes at the blood on his face.  “I’m going to untie you,” he says, marching over to her.  Hit-Girl says nothing.  The way she offers her hands to be untied has all the makings of genuine submission.  She has no reason to fight him anymore.  Matt undoes the knots and takes back his jacket, stepping out of her reach in case she tries to take a swing.  He grabs the suitcase before she can so much as think about cutting and running.  “Take off your wig.  Your mask.”

            She does, the puffiness of her face registering as heat against Matt’s skin.  He tucks the most notable pieces of her costume into the suitcase and zips it up again.  There’s a napkin in his pocket from Josie’s.  He hands it to her.  “Wipe off your face.”

            “Like the cops care what I look like,” Hit-Girl grumbles.  She winces as she prods her new bruises, but she doesn’t cry. 

            Matt uses his jacket to clean himself up, then he re-dons it.  His sprained wrist stings a warning, one he ignores.  “I’m not calling the cops,” he picks up her suitcase.  Hit-Girl’s heart does a nervous two-step in her chest, and Matt’s does the same.  God damn it, he shouldn’t be doing this.  “Let’s get you cleaned up and at home before the babysitter wakes up.  You’re…” there has to be a consequence to this, something to demonstrate that killing is wrong and she shouldn’t hack her way through denizens of criminals, small time or not.  The suitcase seems a good place to start.  “You’re not getting this back.”

            A level stare this time, followed by a perfectly deadpan voice, “Yeah, because there isn’t more where that came from.”

            But she follows him off the rooftop, and that gives Matt hope. 

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!


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